Belmont Park: Readtheprospectus, Awesome Vision enter Commentator in top form

ELMONT, N.Y. – It would appear that the best New York-breds in training are either sprinters or turf horses, leaving a void in the traditional handicap division of route horses.

It is a void that 4-year-olds Readtheprospectus and Awesome Vision may be ready to fill. Readtheprospectus has won five consecutive races, while Awesome Vision has won three of his last four starts. The two head a field of six entered in Saturday’s $150,000 Commentator Handicap, the richest, though not the most compelling, of seven stakes offered on New York Showcase Day.

Readtheprospectus, a gelding by Read the Footnotes, steamrolled through his New York-bred conditions this winter and then won a pair of open-company allowance races at Aqueduct. Though he started his streak on turf, he has won his last four route races on dirt.

“The distance of the races, more than the surface, has been the key to him,” trainer Chad Brown said. “As the distances have increased, he’s really responded well. I think the horse prefers two turns – that’s my one concern about this race – but he has run well at one turn, albeit it was earlier in his conditions.”

Readtheprospectus will break from post 4 under Junior Alvarado.

Awesome Vision, a son of Awesome Again, is another who appears to prefer two turns. He won three such races over Aqueduct’s inner track, including a dead-heat victory with the win machine Saginaw in the Compelling Word Stakes.

Awesome Vision comes off a fourth-place finish in a third-level allowance going one turn at Belmont on May 1.

“He’s been consistent all year,” trainer Tom Albertrani said. “His last race wasn’t terrible, and he wants to go further. You get a little spoiled when they win three in a row and run fourth. A little extra distance is certainly going to help him.”

Trainer David Jacobson has the uncoupled entry of So Scott and Spa City Fever, both of whom would be coming back on short rest. So Scott finished third in an allowance race Monday. Spa City Fever was a front-running winner of a third-level allowance May 23.

While those two horses would be returning quickly, Icabad Crane is slated to make his first start in 18 months in the Commentator. The five-time stakes winner has not run since finishing second in the Alex M. Robb on Dec. 31, 2011.

Trainer Graham Motion said Icabad Crane was sidelined due to a soft-tissue injury but has been ready to run for a while.

“I considered running him in the grass race, but when this came up such a small field, it seemed like the logical thing to do,” Motion said. “He’s certainly ready to run. I’d hope he’d run respectably, but when a horse has been off that long and he’s an 8-year-old gelding, you never actually know what it’s going to take to get him back to form.”

Fox Rules, who won the 2012 New York Derby at Finger Lakes, completes the field.